A lot of emphasis in the SEO world is focused on improving external linking or backlinks. Of course, since this is one of the most effective ways of improving search engine rankings, it is definitely an important aspect of search engine optimization.

While external links are often the focus, internal or “on-site” linking can be nearly just as important. The way links are set up on your own website can have both positive and negative effects on your search engine rankings. If you link to the wrong websites, you may be flagged or penalized. If you don’t optimize the links on your website with your important keywords, you’re certainly not getting the maximum rankings possible for your website.

Here’s what you can do to make sure you’re getting the most out of your website (in no particular order):

1. Use important keywords in your navigation and menu options. Without going overboard, try to use keywords that are popular and relevant to the page the link will be pointing to.
2. For any links you add that point to external websites, be sure to use the “nofollow” tag to ensure you’re not showing a “vote” for that website. Of course, there will be instances where you may want to maintain that vote, so don’t use the nofollow tag on those links. Nofollow tags can also be used to block the search engines from following pages* on your own site that are of little SEO value.
3. Within the body of your content, there may be opportunities to link to other pages on your website using relevant keywords as “anchor text”. If you choose to create links within your body content, be sure that you’re taking the site’s visitors into consideration - you wouldn’t want to add a link in a spot that may distract them from completing a goal (e-commerce sale, generating a lead, etc.).
4. If your images contain links to other important pages, be sure to use descriptive ALT tags that include the relevant keywords for the destination page.

*This is an advanced SEO technique and we do not suggest that you utilize this procedure on your website without consulting an SEO professional first.

The most important thing you need to understand is that your website is valuable and directly influences your company’s ability to rank well in the search engines. While we’ve included some basic linking recommendations here, it’s important that you research each method and determine if it’s something that’s right for your website. We suggest that you consult with an SEO company or consultant to ensure that you’re implementing these tactics correctly.

Jennifer Kaufman
Linking Strategist

The benefits of strategic linking to SEO are still alive and kicking. Though it’s not the only thing needed to make high rankings, in my experience it is the most effective way to gain authority. It’s amazing how much authority goes to a site with good quality links that point to it.

It’s important not to just take any link you can lasso in. The key is to get links from sites that have similar and supporting content. For example, a good reciprocal link for a food site, would be another site that is food related. The higher the page rank on their home page, the better for you.

You’ll also want to take advantage of your title and description. It’s important to do your research for terms that you want to show up for. When you find one you see as most appropriate, make sure you don’t already rank for it. Your goal is to rank high for a term you don’t already rank for. Your description should also be optimized and supportive towards your title.

If you want to take it a step further, find out what page you will be listed on on their site, and cater your title and description to the main theme of their site and page topic.

Jennifer Kaufman
Linking Strategist

The two biggest stories the past few weeks related to internet marketing and SEO are probably the new tools that Google and Yahoo both rolled out.

Google unveils more links
Within your Google Webmaster Tools account, you can now view/download a much larger scope of incoming links to your website.  In addition, you can view the links to specific pages on your site and generate an outgoing link report as well.  Here’s the official word from Vanessa Fox over at GWT:

You asked, and we listened: We’ve extended our support for querying links to your site to much beyond the link: operator you might have used in the past. Now you can use webmaster tools to view a much larger sample of links to pages on your site that we found on the web. Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded. All you need to do is verify site ownership to see this information. Read the full story

I’ve tested the new link reports out and it doesn’t give you too much information that you probably don’t already have.  In addition, Matt Cutts stated that the reports are by no means 100% of the data available and don’t reflect the true number of links pointing to your site.  He also stated that just because a link is showing up in the report, that it’s not an indicator that the link is counted in the algorithm - it’s a simple report of the links, nothing more.

Yahoo Pipes unveiled
The general scope of “Yahoo Pipes” is the ability to combine RSS/feeds (or mash them together), and then manipulate the data in a way that’s useful for you or your website(s).  It’s basically an RSS masher & re-hasher.  The “pipes” name comes from the Unix pipes that let you combine commands (foreign to this writer).

What Is Pipes? Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line. Read the full story

Nice link from Yahoo Pipes btw… what, you couldn’t figure out how to use Mod Rewrite?

A member over on Cre8asite Forums started a topic suggesting that Link Baiting was ruining the web.

At first glance, the content seems informational, educational, or perhaps it’s just entertaining. However, that’s usually not the case: the content was only created to cause a temporary stir, a short sensation, a short-term mass of links, a short-term rise in popularity; perhaps in the hope of building a medium- or long-term reputation.

I don’t think it works that way, however. A “bubble-gum” content - nice, juicy, makes big bubbles: but stale after an hour. Boring. Lots of stale bubble-gum is just that: stale bubble gum. Lots of short term sensationalism / link-bait is the same: fresh for the moment, stale before your coffee gets cold. The only reputation that is built up is for providing stale bubble-gum. Looking at a website like that, you see a few fresh pieces, but 99% is old, out of date, out of fashion. Do you really want to be caught keeping old link-bait online?

Link baiting is one of the hottest methods for SEO companies and bloggers to increase their marketshare and their incoming link popularity.  All you need is a story or idea that people agree with and want to link to, or that they disagree with and make a big stink about it (gaining exposure for the original poster).

The comments in the forum post suggest that most link bait becomes stale pretty quickly, but I think it really depends on what the topic is and how useful the topic is to each reader.  For some folks, the information will become stale very quickly, but for others the topic could live on for several days/weeks/months or even years if it’s applicable to them or their business and it’s provides a benefit/value to them.